Justin Miller, of Miller and Miller Auctions, stands beside a walnut chest of drawers from Waterloo County, commissioned by Samuel Bricker as a wedding gift for his eldest daughter, on display at the auction house in New Hamburg, Ont., on Feb. 5.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
An antique tall chest is up for auction in New Hamburg, Ont. Its drawers hold nothing, save for a story that involves a famous pioneer, a mystery cabinet maker and a significant work of Canadian literature.
The piece is known as the Bricker Chest, and if it could talk, it would do so in a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Samuel Bricker commissioned the nearly six-foot tower of walnut for his eldest daughter’s wedding in 1826. Bricker was a wealthy Pennsylvania-born Mennonite who was among the first migration of settlers into the interior of Western Ontario. On Saturday, the cabinet is expected by the gavel wielders at Miller & Miller Auctions Ltd. to fetch as much as $8,000. Or possibly more.
“Eight thousand dollars would be a bargain, boy,” says local historian Barbara Dobson. “It’s pretty rare, relatively speaking. Plus, Samuel Bricker is a very important figure in the history of what was formerly known as Waterloo County. To have a piece of furniture that he commissioned is quite something.”
Barbara Dobson with the historic novel related to the chest. Dobson has an original 1924 edition.Rachel Jedemann/Supplied
Dobson, 84, could probably write a book on Bricker. But there is no need for that, because B. Mabel Dunham already did. Her 1924 novel The Trail of the Conestoga was inspired by the real story of the pioneering Bricker family. The protagonist is Sam Bricker, described as impetuous, red-headed, impulsive and energetic. Dunham was the head librarian of Kitchener Public Library. She had Mennonite ancestors; the novel represented her debut literary effort.
“I simply had these facts about my own county that had been handed down from generation to generation, and I felt that Canadians would be interested in them,” she told The Globe upon the book’s release.
The forward was contributed by one William Lyon Mackenzie King. The country’s prime minister and Kitchener’s favourite son penned a blurb about Mennonites from Pennsylvania who came to Ontario in order that they might live under British laws.
“We know and appreciate too little the initiative, patience and self-sacrifice which characterized the struggles of our forefathers in laying not only the material but also the political foundations of our country,” he wrote.
In its review of the book, The Globe praised The Trail of the Conestoga as a “novel wrapped in a wealth of history” and an “epic of the pioneers.” After the settlers were duped with faulty titles to mortgaged land, real-life Bricker and his brother went back to Pennsylvania to raise money to rescue the new landowners from foreclosures. They successfully did so, claiming the 60,000 acres of what would be called Waterloo Township.
The Bricker Chest is top-drawer Canadiana, being sold at a time when the country’s sovereignty is perceived to be under attack by the aggressive posturing of the incoming Trump administration. The Trail of the Conestoga is the story of the Bricker family’s arduous migration from the United States. One scene depicts settlers looking across the Niagara River to Ontario:
“Look once, Johnny,” cried Sam, with ecstatic joy. “There’s Canada!” He lifted the little fellow to his shoulder and pointed across the river.
But Little Johnny looked blankly about him. “Where?” he cried, demanding more explicit information.
“Why, there!” replied Sam. “Can’t you see? All that bush on the other side of the river, that’s all Canada.”
A shade of disappointment passed over the child’s face. “It’s all the same as here,” he said tragically. “I thought it would be different.”
“It is different,” insisted Sam, as he let the child down again. “But you can’t see it with your eyes, the difference. Wait once till you are as old as me. Then you’ll know what I mean.”
With this decidedly vague and protracted promise of explanation Little Johnny had to be content.
The chest is initialled “MB 1826,″ for Bricker’s daughter Mary and the commission date. No markings identify the craftsman, but a similar piece in the Royal Ontario Museum’s collection is attributed to David Adolphus Simmerman, from the Niagara Peninsula.
The Bricker Chest’s consignee, Gerald Fagan, purchased it at a Sotheby’s auction in Toronto some 30 years ago. He is not comfortable disclosing how much he paid. “I’d rather not say, because it was a sizable sum. I hope that’s okay.”
He and his wife of nearly 60 years used it in the master bedroom of their house in London, Ont. “I used the high drawers, because I was the taller of the two,” he says.
The chest is initialled ‘MB 1826,’ for Bricker’s daughter Mary and the commission date.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Fagan’s wife died last April. Though he is consigning nearly three dozen other items in this weekend’s auction, the chest is the major piece. “We had it all those years,” he says. “We enjoyed it, we loved it. There’s not much more I can say about it.”
The cabinet is listed as being in very good condition, with most of its original brass intact. It has a pair of hidden drawers, intended to store valuables – valuables that anyone wealthy enough to afford the cabinet at that time and place would surely have possessed.
“Commissioning such a piece would have the activity of the upper five-per-cent of the population,” says Ethan Miller, of Miller & Miller. “Most people wouldn’t have dreamt of having a proper dresser at all.”
Miller describes the chest’s historic background as a “wildcard” element to the sale: “If there are two collectors who find the story to be important and meaningful to the narrative of Canada, they’ll go the moon if they lock horns.”
Dobson, who owns her grandparents’ first edition of The Trail of the Conestoga, which she first read as a child and has read a few more times since, doesn’t know how much the chest would have cost in 1826.
“I don’t even know what currency they would have used,” she says. “At the time, they were still some people doing British currency, some doing American. And we didn’t know where we were at here in Canada.” She then adds with a chuckle, “Has anything really changed?”
